What’s been especially encouraging is that the two smallest playtesters have gone back for multiple games between themselves entirely of their own accord. When one of my goals was to take the combat elements of an RPG and simplify it to play with my kids, then I’d say that’s already a success!

Check out some of our action shots. Don’t forget to click/tap on the image for a hi-res version.

Last week I mentioned that there were still several areas that needed work (and when I say work, I really mean “creating from scratch because I haven’t gotten there yet”):

Scaling/climbing terrain (cliffs, hillsides etc)

Swimming/water

Cover against attacks

Bonuses for attacking from high ground

Expanding the Equipment and Abilities list.

I’m happy to say that most of these have been straightforward rules additions, and four out of five are now workable. Of course, the Equipment and Abilities list is still outstanding, and due to the piecemeal nature of it is likely to be in a permanent state of flux. The rest, though, have been tested a few times and seem to be working reasonably well.

A couple of these points have required a new concept – that of a “Step”. A Step is a change in level on the battlefield from one Hex to another. I’m using my HexTerra terrain for this, with the files provided in 10mm height intervals. So a fairly simple conversion is 10mm – 1 Step. Pretty straightforward overall.

Climbing and Descending

Climbing/Descending terrain is simply done at an increased cost for Steps of 1 to 2 above/below your current level.

Going up or down one step costs one Action point, in addition to the “base” Action needed to move.

Two steps is two Action points (plus the base Action to move).

Moving up or down three or more steps requires you to spend three Action points total, and make a 1d6 roll, adding the lower of your Strength/Power or Dexterity/Speed bonuses. If you roll equal to or greater than the number of “Steps” you’re attempting to climb, you succeed. If you roll lower than the number of Steps, you fail. A fail when Climbing/Ascending simply means you don’t move, but you’ve still spent those three Actions. A fail when Descending means you fall, and take 1d6 of Damage.

Swimming

Swimming requires two Actions whenever you enter a Water hex. A Character cannot attack while in the water, and any bonus to their defence is halved, rounded down.

Additionally, you cannot spend points on moving or attacking with other Characters while there is a Character in the water. They must leave the water before you can do anything else, even if this takes multiple turns.

Cover

Cover is provided by different types of terrain, and comes in two types – Hard Cover, through which an attack cannot be made, and Soft Cover, which imparts a -4 penalty on any attack made.

Draw a straight line from the centre of your Hex to the centre of the target Hex. If the line passes through any part of a Hex containing Cover, then apply the relevant penalty above.

Hard Cover exists when there is a permanent structure (such as a building) or a “bump” in the landscape of 3 or more Steps.

Soft Cover includes pretty much anything else, including rocks, trees, other Characters etc.

High Ground

High Ground provides different bonuses, depending on whether you are making a Melee or Ranged attack.

Melee combatants receive a +1 bonus to both attacks and defence against opponents 1-2 Steps lower than them (It’s hard to strike uphill, or to defend against attacks coming from above). No Melee attack can be made where there is a Step difference of 3 or more (30mm in a 28mm-scale game – roughly 6 feet).

Ranged attacks gain +1 Range for every three Steps they are above their target.

Other Changes

Some of the other modifications I’ve been playing with include (briefly):

Implementing the card-based Action Selection at the start of rounds, instead of dice. This seems to be working really well.

Changing the points required for various bonuses. Eg, I’ve swapped the point requirements of Melee and Ranged bonuses in an attempt to drive more Melee combat instead of relying on Ranged attacks.

Lowering the cost of bonuses across the board, and allowing Offensive and Defensive bonuses to be purchased separately. This should allow for a wider range of customisation, without overly complicating things (I hope…)

So far, things are working really, really well. I’m still thoroughly entertained when I play, and the kids are capable of playing on their own. That’s two of my big design goals right there. In fact, even the 6 year old knows all these rules well enough that I only need to help him with his maths, not with character creation, attacking, defending etc. He can play perfectly fine on his own.

What I still need to work on – but honestly think it will just come with time – is the “RPG Combat” feeling. I suspect this is mostly going to be addressed through the various combinations of Equipment and Abilities, so I’ll just keep plugging away at expanding the list slowly.

That’s all for this week – I’m slowly getting all this put together into a not-very-pretty-but-hopefully-usable rulebook. With any luck I’ll be able to get something functional out to you all soon, and you can give it a go yourselves and provide some feedback!

Until then, as always,

Yours in Adventure,

Shane.

]]>http://crackpot.studio/2018/07/27/skirmish-week-in-review/feed/0341HexTerra – Sales Data Analysishttp://crackpot.studio/2018/06/15/hexterra-sales-data-analysis/
http://crackpot.studio/2018/06/15/hexterra-sales-data-analysis/#respondFri, 15 Jun 2018 10:03:31 +0000http://crackpot.studio/?p=251This week I’ve once again done zero with respect to game development. Sometimes life just gets in the way of all the fun stuff! But I told myself that I would try my hardest to stick to a weekly blog post, so here we are.

HexTerra has now been on the market for almost exactly a month, so I figured it was probably time to take a look at some of the data. I’m not going to do a deep dive into analysis, contrary to the title. Just some very basic number crunching. Before we look at the data, though, a couple of things to keep in mind:

I have done zero advertising within the DriveThruRPG platform.

I posted in three (maybe four) Facebook groups about the initial release, once only.

I released HexTerra as “Pay What You Want”, including free, with a suggested price of AU$3.00 (approx US$2.25).

So, what we’re about to see is pretty much “organic” data.

First, a chart I produced based on the line-by-line sales reports available from DriveThruRPG:

So what are we looking at here?

In total, there has been 85 individual downloads of the product. I’m told that this really is quite a good result compared to many text-based RPG products. I can only imagine that this is due to the fact that those of us who love our 3D printers will jump at the chance to check out new files wherever we see them.

Of these 85 downloads, 7 have been paid downloads. In general, the majority of people who have paid have done so at or above the recommended price – good data to have for the future, I suppose.

The total income has been US$15.13. By the time DriveThruRPG take their cut and it’s converted to AU$, it’s basically even.

The first few days of a product’s life on DriveThruRPG are the most exciting, as it appears on the front page, getting many, many eyes on it. This is pretty clearly reflected in the chart above. Once HexTerra dropped off the “newest” listing, downloads dropped right off.

Now, let’s take a look at a screenshot straight from what DriveThruRPG calls a “Title Analysis”:

These figures are actually looking at the entire lifespan of the product, not the first 30 days as discussed above. As a result, some of the sales data doesn’t match what I’ve just told you. It’s OK – this just reflects sales made after Month 1.

What I particularly wanted to point out is the top line – there have been 1037 total page views on the HexTerra Product Page. If we couple that with the 8 paid purchases, we get an interesting number: Views Per Purchase (VPP. I just coined it. It’ll catch on, and soon all the Cool Kids (TM) will be using it. Just you watch). A lower VPP is better, as it means you have a higher sales rate – people are more likely to buy your product after seeing it.

HexTerra’s VPP is currently (1037/8) = 129.6

130 people open the HexTerra page and take a look for every one person who decides to stump up some cash. I don’t have any data to compare this with other products – either 3D printer files or PDF text materials – so I really don’t know how this compares to the rest of the landscape. I’m neither impressed nor disappointed – the number simply is.

Now the challenge is two-fold:

How do I improve this, and

Do I actually want to? This is all just for fun at this stage.

Chime in with your suggestions! And if any other publishers are game enough, I’d be crazy interested in comparing data.

Yours in Adventure,

Shane.

]]>http://crackpot.studio/2018/06/15/hexterra-sales-data-analysis/feed/0251HexTerra – Tabletop Terrainhttp://crackpot.studio/2018/05/18/hexterra-tabletop-terrain/
http://crackpot.studio/2018/05/18/hexterra-tabletop-terrain/#respondFri, 18 May 2018 06:47:50 +0000http://crackpot.studio/?p=204Bring a point of difference to your next RPG session with HexTerra, a modular hex-based tile system for RPG terrain.

Available now on DriveThruRPG as “Pay What You Want”, there is literally no reason not to grab it and give it a try.

Don’t have a printer? Buy one!

No time around all your other printing projects? Cancel them!

Your next session is tonight? Just schedule another game!

You use a square grid? Then it’s time you learn how awesome those two extra sides can be!

What started out as a flight of fancy (like all my other projects) rapidly took shape as I found myself spending all my time on designing an interlocking hex-based terrain system instead of focusing on adult responsibilities.

Hexes are elegant, eyecatching and somewhat more natural than squares. While squares are great for man-made environments, hexes provide more freedom of movement and layout options for natural environments.

I’m hoping to find time to work on a set of dressing pieces that work in conjunction with the hex arrangement. Think trees, rocks, plant life, and various structures.

Printing Instructions

Supports will be required for a clean print, with two options depending on user preference:

Print upright for a smoother surface finish, but increasing time and support material (Support density ~5%).

Print upside down for a slightly faster and more economical print (Support density ~10%)

Files are provided in “upside down” orientation by default.

Usage

It is recommended to build a large, flat surface, then build upon this level.

“Ground level” pieces can be clipped together using the provided clip.

Pieces placed upon the ground level will lock into place.

Due to printing tolerances, some individual pieces may clip and lock into place much better when placed adjacent to other pieces on the same level.

View of the underside of the tiles, with clips holding separate pieces together. The clips fit into the recesses between the tile corners, allowing the assembly to sit flat on the tabletop.When the pieces are locked together, the entire assembly can be lifted from the tabletop as a single piece. No need to be scared of bumping the table!

So what are you waiting for? Grab a copy, get to printing, and please leave a review on DriveThruRPG!

]]>http://crackpot.studio/2018/05/18/hexterra-tabletop-terrain/feed/0204Trials and Tribulations of 3D Designinghttp://crackpot.studio/2018/05/12/trials-and-tribulations-of-3d-designing/
http://crackpot.studio/2018/05/12/trials-and-tribulations-of-3d-designing/#commentsSat, 12 May 2018 00:20:52 +0000http://crackpot.studio/?p=187Last week, I outlined my fruitless search for a modular, hex-based terrain system for tabletop RPGs. As a result, I started working on my own solution. I’m not a designer of any description by trade, and CAD programs give me a huge headache, so this is something that I’ve no doubt made more complicated for myself than it needed to be.

Today, I’ll run you through some of the processes I used and give you the opportunity to yell at me. “By all the Gods, why did he do that?” is undoubtedly going to be a common phrase coming from those of you reading this who have experience in this type of thing.

But stick with me, because I’m still on track to release the full basic set of tiles next week. Just a few tweaks to go…

Remember this from last week? These are the seven basic tile shapes that I’m working on, with additional heights to come as well.

In the beginning, there was Microsoft 3D Builder

I say that I’m not a designer, which is true, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t tinkered about in various programs in the past. Initially, I was only interested in splitting models into various smaller pieces to fit on my print bed (The Monoprice Select Mini is not exactly a giant machine). I quickly found that Microsoft 3D Builder was perfect for this job. It’s free, and should already be installed on your PC if you’re running Windows 10.

Opening the program takes mere seconds, and you’re presented with a couple of basic options to open an existing file, or create a new scene. Really simple and straightfoward. If you open a model, highlight it, and click Edit -> Split, it will take you no time at all to play around with the plane and break your model into multiple pieces (very handy for printing more complicated models that require excessive supports).

A model in the process of being split in Microsoft 3D Builder

And it was good…

I’ve created some basic designs in Microsoft 3D Builder for Horizons – not that I’ve revealed them yet. I must get back to that soon – so I figured this would be a good place to start for my terrain. Building creations from scratch is pretty simple in such a basic program, but of course your options are a bit limited when compared to the industry heavy hitters like Fusion 360. My initial design included a series of hooks and slots to tie the various pieces together.

v1 had more than one catastrophic design issue…

It printed just fine, but when it came to test fitting, it was… a dismal failure. I honestly don’t even know why I thought it would work. There were a couple of major issues:

My hooks weren’t aligned in a way that would allow them to match the slots in various orientations. D’oh!

When I did manage to align a few pieces, they were far too difficult to latch together, as the hook on one piece was getting in the way of the rotation necessary to seat the hook of the second piece.

Version 2 included some on-the-spot brute-force changes (that is – I snapped off a heap of hooks to make a symmetrical pattern and turned the ex-hook locations into slots with a pair of trusty pliers). This worked a little better, as it was easier to line up the pieces, but it was still not going to work on a larger scale with multiple pieces.

No photographic or screenshot evidence exists of Version 2, as it very quickly became Version 3. I snapped off the rest of the hooks and designed a separate clip piece in a simple U-shape. This could possibly work… My crappy, hand-built (hand-broken?) Version 3 quickly got mocked up in 3D Builder and became Version 4.

v3 – An ugly attempt, but the first one that showed some degree of promise. If you look closely you can see where I snapped off the previous hook system, and gouged out extra depth for the slots.

v4 design – no integrated clips, hooks or slots at all. So clean!

Version 4 looked so clean and simple. Time for a test print and see how it works.

v4 – bottom view on the left, top view on the right. We might finally be on to something. If only we could make those clips flush with the base…

Version 4 seems to have some potential. The clips hold it all together really well from the bottom, and when viewed from the top, they seem to fit nicely. Trouble is, of course, that the clips aren’t sitting flush with the base which makes the whole assembly a little uneven. That shouldn’t be too hard to address – let’s go back to our notches for Version 5.

v5 – it works!

And here, at Version 5, we have some thing that actually works. And better yet, they stack really nicely, too, locking in to each other vertically as well as horizontally (I didn’t write about the changes I made at each revision in this regard for the sake of brevity).

With the base hex sorted, it was time to work on some of the different shapes I needed. And this is where I found a critical limitation of 3D Builder – edge alignment.

… but Fusion 360 is better.

When I tried to make two (or three, or more) individual hexes line up, I found that 3D Builder had some issues. Namely, while the edges would “snap” together when they were brought near each other it seemed that there was some lack of precision. After much trial and error, I gave up on 3D Builder and delved deeper into Fusion 360.

Don’t be put off by the price ($310/year) – there’s a free hobbyist subscription, with all the power of the full version. What you are allowed to be put off by is the learning curve. Fusion 360 is horribly powerful and detailed, which fairly logically makes it a bit trickier to pick up than 3D Builder.

Look at all those options… oh, my.

Eventually though, I managed to pick up the 2% of the program’s capabilities that I needed, and rebuilt my basic model from scratch. From there, I just needed to duplicate the single hex, align the edges of each piece, and remove some of the now-excess central “legs” (to save time and material when printing).

The underside of models A, B and C (from right to left. I do enjoy being a bit backwards). You can see the edges have been removed where the individual hexes join.

Version 6 turned out to do everything I needed and wanted. Now, I just needed to adjust some of the heights to allow stacking, and consistent levels, and we’re good to go!

Next week, with just the tiniest bit of luck, the weekly post will contain a link to download the basic set of terrain in varying heights. Make sure you come back then!

I swear I didn’t set out to create yet another project that would claim so many more hours of my life. Honest, I didn’t. But I started running some test prints for 3D terrain (I’m a sucker for props in my Pathfinder games) and none of them really did what I wanted them to do.

I mean, there’s some really, REALLY cool stuff out there for 1-inch square grids. Printable Scenery and Fat Dragon Games are two groups who produce awesome material that I routinely find have somehow found their way onto my hard drive *cough*. But when it comes to exploration and wilderness adventures, I’ve always been attracted to Hex-based formats. It works in just the same way as square grids for the most part, but it removes that awkward diagonal movement penalty. Plus, it just plain old looks good. Trouble is, I’ve not found anyone who produces nice Hex pieces for tabletop gaming.

Heroscape, however, is a different story. The long-abandoned Heroscape provided some really awesome terrain. Just take a perusal through a basic Google Image search for Heroscape. How cool is that? Even Heroscape, however, has a couple of problems:

Because it’s out of print, and still surprisingly popular, it’s kinda hard to get hold of.

The hexes are 1.75 inches from side to side, making 28mm-scale figurines disappear.

Custom tile on the left, with Heroscape-style tile on the right. Note the difference in space on the hex surfaces between them. It’s even more noticeable with the tiles in front of you.

So… what do we do now?

We turn to the Internet for help, of course! “3D printing is popular” I said to myself, “and Heroscape is popular. Surely someone has made a Heroscape-compatible set of tiles”. Lo and behold, I was right! Thingiverse has a whole HEAP of Heroscape-compatible material. Rejoice!

So I dutifully set about downloading as many things as I could, and scaling them to a more 28mm-appropriate size. And that’s when disaster struck. None of the sets I could find – not a single one – would “lock” together when scaled down. They just slid apart.

I even bought yet another Fat Dragon set – Mountain Adventures – hoping that it would work for me. And while there are many 3D-printing, game-playing enthusiasts on the internet that love the set (and indeed claim that the pieces lock together a little *too* tightly), they still suffered from fatal looseness when scaled to a suitable size.

A selection of various tile systems and in-house experiments. Every one of these failed for some reason – usually related to effectiveness of the interconnectedness.

And so here we are – I’m spending way too many hours on another project. Unlike my others, though, this will be available to you all relatively soon, I promise. Because I’m confident I’ve figured it out. It’s not as elegant as Heroscape’s locking mechanism, and it’s not as easy as Printable Scenery’s OpenLock clip, or Fat Dragon’s Dragonbite clip. But it does allow various shapes and heights to be created and clipped together, and stacked higher and higher.

The basic shapes available in the set. Various heights are also coming.

A “G”-size tile, in 10mm, 60mm and 120mm heights. These, and all the other sizes, can actually be stacked on each other, locking together to create landscapes of any size.

Where next?

I’m not *quite* ready to give you everything. Next week I’ll run through the various designs I’ve tested out, and the process I’ve used to get here. The following week, I’m really hoping to be able to release the files to you all, so make sure you come back. In the meantime, Here’s a few shots of a (small) scene I’ve managed to put together with the tiles I’ve test printed so far. Never mind the paint job – I’ve never claimed painting is one of my strengths…